This is why vaccination is NOT a bad idea.
hmmmm
except that it has been shown that ventilators caused big problems...turns out MORE oxygen was the actual answer
Are Ventilators Helping or Harming COVID-19 Patients?
FROM THE WEBMD ARCHIVES
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, April 15, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Mechanical ventilators have become a symbol of the COVID-19 pandemic, representing the last best hope to survive for people who can no longer draw a life-sustaining breath.
But the ventilator also marks a crisis point in a patient's COVID-19 course, and questions are now being raised as to whether the machines can cause harm, too.
Many who go on a ventilator die, and those who survive likely will face ongoing breathing problems caused by either the machine or the damage done by the virus.
The problem is that the longer people are on ventilation, the more likely they are to suffer complications related to machine-assisted breathing.
Recognizing this, some intensive care units have started to delay putting a COVID-19 patient on a ventilator to the last possible moment, when it is truly a life-or-death decision, said Dr. Udit Chaddha, an interventional pulmonologist with Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
"There had been a tendency earlier on in the crisis for people to put patients on ventilators early, because patients were deteriorating very quickly," Chaddha said. "That is something that most of us have stepped away from doing.
"We let these patients tolerate a little more hypoxia [oxygen deficiency]. We give them more oxygen. We don't intubate them until they are truly in respiratory distress," Chaddha said. "If you do this correctly, if you put somebody on the ventilator when they need to be put on the ventilator and not prematurely, then the ventilator is the only option."
Experts estimate that between 40% and 50% of patients die after going on ventilation,
regardless of the underlying illness, Chaddha said.
Regardless of the illness. Hello? you don't want a ventilator shoved down your throat.
It's too early to say if this is higher with COVID-19 patients, although some regions like New York report as many as 80% of people infected with the virus die after being placed on ventilation.
These critically ill patients die because they are so sick from COVID-19 that they needed a ventilator to remain alive, not because the ventilator fatally harms them, said Dr. Hassan Khouli, chair of critical care medicine at Cleveland Clinic. "I think for the most part it's not related to the ventilator," Khouli said. "They're dying on the ventilator and not necessarily dying because of being on a ventilator."
However,
mechanical ventilators do cause a wide range of side effects. Those complications, combined with lung damage from COVID-19, can make recovery a long and arduous process, Chaddha and Khouli said.
New York City lawyer and legal blogger David Lat spent six days on a ventilator last month, in critical condition at NYU Langone Medical Center after he was diagnosed with COVID-19.
"This terrified me," Lat wrote in an opinion piece in the
Washington Post. "A few days earlier, after my admission to the hospital, my physician father had warned me: 'You better not get put on a ventilator. People don't come back from that.'"
Lat survived, and he thanks the ventilator -- but he also is struggling to recover his ability to breathe.
source you can read the rest of it following the source link to the left
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